Holden native and his wife chase dream of career in comedy

I think our attitude is whoever can get up and running with any of these projects we have is great. I think we're just a team rooting for each other.

-- Matt Evans

The main tenet of improv requires that actors work cooperatively together when on stage. Though there are no such rules off of it, both Holden native Matt Evans and his wife, Christine Walters, have held true to that concept as they attempt to climb the ladder of show business success while raising a family in Westchester, N.Y.

There is no spousal rivalry to determine who can reach the highest rung first. There is only the knowledge that whoever does will be there to pull the other up.

“I think our attitude is whoever can get up and running with any of these projects we have is great,” Evans said. “I think we're just a team rooting for each other.”

That team was formed in 2005 at the East Coast epicenter of improv, the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City, which was co-founded by Amy Poehler of “Saturday Night Live” and “Parks and Recreation” fame, and which has helped launch the careers of dozens of actors and writers in television and film.

“We met at the theater at a New Year's Eve party. She was a long-time performer at UCB and I was starting out there, so comedy kind of brought us together,” Evans said.

Just a year earlier Evans had made a leap of faith, electing to leave his job as a cameraman at WLNE, the ABC affiliate in Providence, after working there since 2000. The decision turned out to be a bold one for Evans, who admittedly is “not a huge risk-taker. Everything lined up where my job was going to change drastically, my car lease was up and my apartment lease was up. So everything pushed me to go to New York.”

His goal was — like most who dream of being paid to make people laugh — to land a spot on “Saturday Night Live.” But his plan for doing so was vague: He would apply to be a page at NBC. “I was 29 or 30 at the time, and as, my wife said, I would have been the world's oldest page,” he laughed. “I guess I figured I'd do the program and get to hang around the studio until they discovered me.”

The plan never panned out.

Evans had not always charted a path to work under Lorne Michaels' watchful eye.

The 1993 Wachusett Regional High School graduate was never involved in any theater productions as a student, though he did minor in it when he went off to St. Michael's College in Vermont. Still his primary focus was journalism with an eye toward TV news.

During college he landed an internship at Charter Communications in Worcester, where he ended up working as a photographer and occasional sports reporter once he graduated in 1997.

While there, Evans found he most enjoyed creating the types of comedic spots that ESPN began to produce earlier that decade in which it poked fun at itself and the sports it covered using such athletes as Cam Neely, Roger Clemens and Tiger Woods. “What I really wanted to do more was make goofy promos, so I'd stay weekends and come in by myself and just make these on my own for myself or Kevin Shea, the sports anchor,” he said.

“The sports stuff and journalism was fun, but I realized that I'd love to be writing and acting in goofy videos,” he said.

He would not act on those impulses until he moved to New York City, and was introduced to UCB and eventually enrolled in classes. “That is where everything changed,” he said. “I remember thinking to myself, 'I can't believe this exists and I can't believe how funny these people are,' and I was just hooked.”

One of his first major achievements occurred in 2005 when he performed in a one-person show titled “Can I Call You My Girlfriend?” that was directed by Zach Woods, who plays Gabe Lewis in NBC's “The Office.”

“It was awesome being up there and performing at that theater because it was and is such a respected theater,” Evans said of the show. “It was also a proud moment for me because I wrote and performed in it.”

What makes Evans so unique, Woods said, is that he has this everyman quality to him, which his characters embody. “He seems like the nicest, most normal guy in the world who is sort of sympathetic,” he said. “So you have that kind of initial conventionality that is combined with this incredibly bizarre, funny behavior.”

He recalled one character Evans played who is trying to come up with screen names for a dating website, all of which are spins on a number of famous authors' names with a sexual twist. “The premise sounds so stupid, but the actual sketch is amazing,” Woods said. “He plays it straight, so there is no ironic distance between him and the character. He really commits so hard to it.”

Since that first one-person show, Evans has continued with UCB, performing with sketch groups, creating his own online content to showcase his comedic abilities and landing several roles in regional and national commercials, including those for Geico, Royal Caribbean, Toyota, Miracle Whip and most recently Newsday, where he is seen interrupting a dinner theater performance of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Joining him along for the ride has been Walters, a Brooklyn native whom Evans married in 2007.

Though both share an affinity for writing and acting, it has only been recently they have started collaborating on projects, including a sitcom pilot “Breaking The News,” which they wrote, produced and acted in.

The piece, which was accepted into the New York Television Festival last year, is based on Gary Vosot, an earnest local television news anchor based in Westchester that Evans created.

Evans began shooting short vignettes of Vosot, which developed an online following, including those working in the same field as the fictitious character. “I got some real funny responses,” Evans laughed. “I'd get real reporters in the industry quoting him and I got emails from TV agents who wanted to represent Gary.”

Brian Stack, a writer on “Conan” who plays Bill Flynn, an egotistical anchor in “Breaking The News,” echoed the sentiments Woods did about Evans, extending that praise to Walters.

“I think they complement each other very well in terms of style,” he said. “They are both very real and their characters seem like people you could run into on the street. That is something I admire with comedians, that you have this feeling like you are looking at a real person.”

Both Evans and Walters, he said, benefit from being nice, easygoing people who have a real affection for one another. “They seem to take that into the work they produce,” he said. “They seem to work harmoniously. I could very easily see them developing a show that is seen widely.”

They have already taken a step in that direction by producing “Other Mothered,” a Web series they created that stars Walters. The series is featured on Nickmom.com and also appears as an interstitial on NickMom TV.

Walters also served as the head writer for truTV's “Impractical Jokers,” a hidden-camera reality television show in which four friends from New York challenge each other to commit pranks on an unsuspecting public.

The husband and wife have also penned a feature-length screenplay “Adultesence,” based loosely on Evans' childhood in Holden.

These days Evans' focus is on making that next step — he lost his job as a receptionist at a construction consulting firm in New York City shortly after the couple moved from Brooklyn to Westchester roughly two years ago. Walters admitted it may have been a “blessing in disguise because now he can focus on his art. … He works during the day on writing and then when I get home I get to work on punching up what he's done.”

Their down time is typically spent with their son, Finn, 4, an opportunity to relax and step away from the grind that comes with pursuing their dreams.

But then just as quickly they are back at it, hoping to make that next step toward Hollywood stardom. “The drive for me is just to be working in this field,” Evans said.

“And doing what you love,” his wife added.

“If you can make a living doing what you love, that is the goal,” Evans said.